No one ever claimed breaking up was easy.  In the case of JPG magazine it can get down right ugly (worse than a tiff).  I noticed a new Flickr screenshot from Tara Hunt showing that she had deleted her JPG account.  Why would she do that I wondered, and I as read on I realized that two of the founders Derek and Heather Powazek had left the company. 

Evidently the magazine began as a small project sold through Lulu.com.  The project turned into a major magazine and the new management team really wanted to get away from the ‘down and dirty’ history of the publication (amaturish digest printed periodically).  The decided to focus on the future and market to a broad ‘Barnes and Noble‘ audience.  Derek and Heather didn’t agree with the direction.

Paul Cloutier, editor and publisher of JPG, explains that JPG is three things:

• a magazine (printed six times a year)
• a website (photographers can upload photos and stories for the magazine)
• a community (existing exclusively for photographers)

Paul suggest that, "Without you [the community], we’re nothing.  Turns out lots of JPG’s community liked the history of the magazine.  Evidently, for many, the people in the community were more important than the new marketing strategy.  So what did they do about it?  They left the community ~ publically.  There is a Flickr group dedicated to people who have left JPG magazine’s community (more than 236 strong) as seen below:

I suspect that there is much MORE to the story than is reported by Derek in his blog, but to be clear JPG reall f’ed up this one.  Shame on you Paul ~ don’t walk away from your community…